A cannoli recipe that’ll bring Sicily to you

By Claire Saffitz, The New York Times

I have a burning desire to visit Sicily, which has a little to do with “The White Lotus” and a lot to do with a tube-shaped pastry made of fried dough and filled with ricotta: cannoli.

Last year, I came across a video of Nicola and Luca Petta, father-son bakers who own Extrabar, a pastry shop in Piana degli Albanesi, preparing their specialty, cannoli. In the video, Luca mixes and rolls the dough, punches out the shells, and fries them until they’re golden and blistered. The shells flare outward dramatically at the ends, creating more surface area to hold the creamy sheep’s milk ricotta filling.

I was captivated.

Extrabar’s cannoli looked nothing like the tough, often-soggy versions with too-sweet filling I’d eaten before. Knowing that a trip to Sicily wasn’t happening anytime soon, I set out to make my own version, inspired by the perfect simplicity of Extrabar’s. I bought a set of stainless...